


What Once Was In Our Bones

by semi_automatic



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Blurryface's voice in bold, Fear, Heartbreak, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, It gets better I swear, Loss, Loss of Control, M/M, Overdosing, Sad, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, very sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semi_automatic/pseuds/semi_automatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We don't know, we don't know,</p><p>How to put back the power in our soul,</p><p>We don't know, we don't know,</p><p>Where to find what was once in our bones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twenty_one_plants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twenty_one_plants/gifts).



> In response to Hello

Tyler threw a glance over his shoulder as he walked briskly down the cracked tan sidewalk, pulling his hoodie around him as the crisp October wind blew.

It was Halloween, wasn’t it?

He was only outside because his mother had told him he absolutely could not spend any more time locked up in his room, and it was either go outside and get some fresh air or sit in the living room with _his family._

He figured it had been too long since he’d taken a walk.

It was because he didn’t like walking alone.

He had to do everything alone now.

His chest tightened.

He ignored it, shifting the tight fabric under his shirt, pulling his shirt to better hide what was under it, before continuing on his walk. He specifically forced himself to notice how some of the trees were exactly four different shades of orange, just so his mind wouldn’t wander.

It was impossible to keep his mind from wandering.

He nearly walked in to the poor, dangling inchworm, hanging just above eye level. A vivid green that stood stark against grey and orange and red. He stopped, circling it, grinning.

“Hey, Josh-”

He stopped dead.

Josh wasn’t there.

This made his chest tighten again, ten times more than that tight fabric ever possibly could. A feeling of drowning in a confusing purple, of falling off the crack in the sidewalk into an abyss. Lost. But the Josh he wanted there _wasn’t_ Josh.

And that was what felt worst. Even when Josh had been there, it wasn’t Josh. _His_ Josh wasn’t Josh.

He didn’t know who Josh was.

The person he knew never existed.

A void standing where someone was supposed to be.

A chip in his world, in his sanity.

He kept walking.

* * *

 

Tyler didn’t go to school anymore.

It wasn’t because he was stupid. School was too hard. Not the work, that was all easy. The teachers and students and moving and yelling and interaction and buzzing buzzing buzzing. He’d dropped out.

Josh used to come over after school.

Tyler turned his head away from imagined shapes on the ceiling, his eyes focusing on the red numbers of the alarm clock. It was after school. Josh wasn’t coming.

Wouldn’t be his Josh, anyway.

He stood up, stretching his compacted rib cage, yawning and looking around. His room was getting messy. His mom would snap at him if his room got messy. He didn’t do anything else, was in his room all the time. At the very least he could keep it clean, right?

It wasn’t even twenty minutes before Tyler was curled against the wall under the window. His eyes were hot but somehow he wasn’t crying. His chest was breaking, though. He’d found a pair of Josh’s drumsticks.

Back when color would fill the room and Tyler would laugh for the first time in weeks and his chest wouldn’t feel tight and he’d feel alive and okay.

He felt alive and okay with Josh, even though he also always felt his anxiety skyrocket and an urge to apologize after half of his sentences.

 _“I’m sorry…”_ he whispered as he stared at the drumsticks. Half of him wanted to break them in two, throw them out the window. The other half begged to keep them as his only memory of a black void of a person.

The other half won

* * *

.

Tyler stared blankly at the roaring fire, tossing in another stick, the ones he and Josh had collected only weeks before.

Bones.

He felt like his bones were in the sticks. Maybe his bones were sticks, and what he was tossing into the fire was actually his bones.

All of the sticks were rotten and dead, hollowed out.

Tyler hadn’t felt anything but the confusing purple for days. He wanted to tell someone about that color. But the only person who would have listened was it’s very cause.

Tyler sighed as he threw another stick in the fire, before telling Zach he’d see him later and walking out the gate. He wasn’t sure if he was being questioned or not. He couldn’t hear anything.

He was questioning himself.

New lines of scarring on compressed ribs - Josh would be upset over this. Or would he? Which Josh?

Tyler didn’t like not knowing how much of the actual Josh could fill the void, how much he actually knew. He didn’t like the feeling of the months he’d spent with that void being suspended in a nonexistent time.

He didn’t like not knowing if he had hollow bones or dead sticks.

What was the difference?

His feet had lead him to Josh’s house. He was holding sticks in his hand - drumsticks. He stared, stood at Josh’s house for a moment, silent. What would he do when he saw the Josh he _didn’t_ know?

Tyler _couldn’t_ face that.

He _couldn’t even say hello_.

The sidewalk opened up behind him to swallow him whole as he walked up to Josh’s front porch, the C sharp wind suddenly dead and the purple sound of a void person overwhelming.

Tyler burst into dirty blue-green tears.

He thought he heard the door open, thought he heard a voice like blueberries, maybe, but his hollow bones were carrying him away from the house, leaving all evidence of the void-boy he still loved.

Love felt void.

His chest fell open, fell empty.

He wished there was no evidence of himself.

Wished this suddenly different Josh would meld with the void, would wrap him up in his arms again and make him feel something that wasn’t empty and faked and the smell of overwhelming fake flowers.

He wished his bones weren’t hollow, weren’t in the fire, wished the void hadn’t taken the love in his soul.

He wished the cracks in the sidewalk could consume him as he forgot and walked straight into the inchworm instead of into the void, into the fire.

Wished he knew what existed.

Wished he was the void instead.

No evidence he existed.

There was void in his chest and his bones and his soul and the only one who could fill it was the void-boy himself.

Tyler _couldn’t_ get him back.


	2. The Breath I Was Searching For

Seated on the ground, back against the brick wall with his journal in his lap. Writing thoughts, writing songs. He hadn’t written much recently. Hadn’t played much music.

Hadn’t felt much lately.

Going through the motions.

He was sitting against Josh’s high school, in hopes of seeing him, maybe, just maybe.

Tyler wasn’t supposed to see Josh.

It was Saturday.

His headphones block out sounds of busy city streets and bridges and clouds.

Playlist on shuffle, his playlist. He made it. Safe.

Piano chords catch his attention, catch his breath.

Faltering pencil lines on the page.

_I wanna fall inside your ghost…_

He rips out his headphones, fingers shaking. Nearly throws his phone across the street.

Pencil falls out of his hands as all of the birds in him take off and he feels Josh’s ghost wrap around him, feels himself leak.

_And fill up every hole inside my mind…_

__

Tyler is shaking as he shuts the back door behind him. He can’t put words to feeling when this is the most he’s felt in weeks.

Josh had messaged him the night before.

Tyler wasn’t supposed to talk to Josh.

His heart felt like a train when someone he barely knew advised him to block Josh out.

Going through the motions, trying not to think.

Tyler can’t even remember color words for how this feels.

He feels broken.

‘Message me if you need anything else. I know we just met but I’m here.’

_And I want everyone to know…_

Tyler couldn’t get this feeling across to them.

 

He stared at the half-hearted words telling him to drink some water and let out a harsh, ragged scream.

Water didn’t help when he was drowning.

The tears make steady paths down his face as he pulls at his shirt, scratches his neck, wheezing.

No Josh to pull away his hands as his nails dig into his own soft flesh and physical feeling is attached to things he hasn’t felt in weeks.

He was trying to let somebody know, but nobody cared enough to make sense of the senseless boy.

_That I am half a soul divided…_

__

Tyler hadn’t listened to the playlist Josh made him since hours before everything fell.

Tyler had added to Josh’s playlist in anger.

He regretted it.

He hoped Josh hadn’t heard it.

Songs of anger and broken broken broken and fuck Tyler didn’t know what they felt like anymore.

Tyler had lost all of his colors.

Lost the very way he felt anything.

He hasn’t moved out of the kitchen, still shaking.

The song plays in his head without his permission.

Tyler hates the feeling of the words said by the void-boy. Like something from beyond the grave.

He can’t feel it right.

_Sometimes we will die and sometimes we will fly away…_

__

On occasion Tyler wishes he hadn’t cared so much, hadn’t taken the threats so seriously.

Had let Josh die.

Then he screams at himself.

He can’t let Josh die.

But… There is no Josh.

Does this make him a bad person?

Would it have been less painful then?

But it was all lies, so even if he had let Josh die, nothing would have happened.

His footsteps go too loud up the stairs and he sounds angry and he hates himself for being so angry.

He apologizes to nothing for being so angry, as his conscious tells him he doesn’t need to apologize, but memories from feelings upsetting Josh tells him he does.

_Either way you’re by my side, until my dying days…_

Tyler’s door slams and his own heart stops.

Collapsing.

Fighting to get air in his lungs.

He’s so fucking alone.

Nobody cared about making sense of the senseless boy.

If he died right then, would Josh care?

Would Josh even find out?

Dying alone.

Alone made Tyler want to die.

 

_And if I’m not there and I’m far away…_

Josh only lived a few streets away.

Tyler was terrified of seeing him on the street.

He only took walks while Josh was in school.

His walks always took him to Josh’s house.

It felt like a different place.

Josh was never there, and Tyler was grateful and disappointed.

_I said, “Don’t be afraid…”_

Dizzily reading words that chipped apart his very universe.

He still had the messages.

Messages of truth.

Messages begging him to be okay, and alive, and stay that way.

Telling him he could do this.

Telling him not to be afraid.

Tyler was so, so afraid.

He wondered which Josh it was telling him that, or if it was that strange part of the real one that could somehow fill bits of the void.

Josh had messaged him last night.

Tyler hadn’t comprehended the messages over the train engine heart crashing in his lungs.

Tyler was so scared.

_I said, “Don’t be afraid, we’re going home…”_

Violently pushing bookshelves into the corner.

The corner where they’d put Josh’s drum kit for a while.

The corner where Josh held him when there were pills strewn across the floor and Tyler couldn’t speak.

The corner where nothing could get him.

Blocking it off.

The void-boy was there and Tyler didn’t want him to get him.

There wasn’t anywhere safe.

_I wanna strip myself of breath…_

__

Pulling harshly at stretchy tan fabric, wrapped around him.

He shouldn’t wear it.

Oh, Josh would give him those puppy dog eyes and beg him to take them off.

Tyler wore it now specifically to piss off the void.

But now he felt bad.

Spitting apologies at nothing as the bandages fell away. The tightness in his chest didn’t ease up.

_A breathless piece of death I’ve made for you…_

He wished Josh could see this.

See how fucking bad it hurt.

He regretted thinking that; more apologies poured out of lips that felt stained.

He wished Josh could see this.

See it and fix him.

_A mortal writing piece of song will help me carry on…_

__

Kicking over a music stand, screaming.

Drum music on it, lyrics, ideas in blue pen that weren’t his, he never used blue pen.

Blue like the blueberries.

He’d liked when Josh used it because then the words looked more like his voice.

Kicking the papers didn’t give him the satisfaction he wanted, left him empty.

He didn’t feel enough to write any more songs.

_But this, you heard…_

__

Josh had probably listened to the playlist.

Tyler had probably upset him.

Another round of apologies that eventually became nothing but tumbling letters and then squeaks.

Remembering exactly which songs he had played for Josh, remembered which ones came before him, came raw.

Tyler’s neck was raw.

He didn’t feel it anymore.

_So the hearse ran out of gas…_

Tyler remembered when the messages had stopped, the last violent red-blue words of the screen reading, “I’m sorry.”

Tyler remembered hurting.

An hour passed.

He couldn’t take it.

Calling police, calling to save someone nonexistent.

 

_A passenger person grabbed a map…_

 

They asked a lot of questions.

“We need to know what the situation is. We’ll make sure he’s okay but we need to know what to look for.”

Lies spilling from his mouth in a truthful manner.

Not knowing if anything would really be done.

A full half hour of not knowing.

_And the driver inside it contrived a new route to save the past…_

Josh messaged him before the police had gotten there.

Josh was okay.

He became thunder when Tyler told him about the police.

Became stretched-thin drawn on smiles as he asked why in the world Tyler would do that, as he said his parents couldn’t find out.

Tyler felt a carnival ride going too fast and sick cotton candy and he wanted off.

Silence.

“Tyler, come here, we need to talk to you about something.”

Cracking world as he walked down the hall; he didn’t quite feel it yet.

A dizzying distance as truths were told from mouths that only knew half of the truthfully-said lies.

Defendinding Josh even as Josh became void.

_And checked his watch and grabbed a cab_

_A beautifully plain taxi cab_

_A cab, had it cleared out back and two men started to unpack..._

__

Forced to sit in an agonizingly squeaky recliner as he tried not to watch the chips fall out of his reality.

Parents on the phone.

He couldn’t leave because he might do something to himself.

Police officer’s voice.

_Driving once again_

_But now this time there were three men…_

It was reiterated to him how okay Josh was.

How perfectly fine Josh was.

He had stopped listening.

The police officer asked if he was okay, Tyler, if Tyler was okay.

He responded without being there.

“We’ll call if we hear anything else.”

Nobody ever did.

_And then I heard one of them say,_

_"I know the night will turn to gray_

_I know the stars will start to fade_

_When all the darkness fades away_

_We had to steal him from his fate_

_So he could see another day."_

Family hugs.

Tyler smiling because he wasn’t there.

His body smiled while everything else cried.

Cracking.

Parents saying how it had to come out somehow, how maybe now Tyler would feel better, not so worried all the time, maybe now he could focus.

The ghost of Tyler nodded, trying not to entertain the void-boy he felt filling his chest.

He wasn’t allowed to close his door that night.

_Then I cracked open my box_

_Someone must have picked the lock…_

Talking helped.

But only if it was nonsense and still made more sense than Tyler did because it couldn’t be about Tyler.

Friends who he didn’t have that came to pat him on the back and offer a shoulder to cry on.

But it was a two-sided deal. He’d have to be there when they break.

He couldn’t deal with people breaking anymore.

A few friends, true friends, maybe, that he hadn’t talked to in months, really did try to comfort him.

Was this what life was like before Josh?

_A little light revealed the spot_

_Where my fingernails had fought…_

__

He was finally able to say things he never had because it would upset Josh.

The few times he’d said these things, it made Josh worse.

Tyler still apologized after saying them.

He was starting to notice it.

Starting to notice how this had affected him.

Noticing that he was noticing.

_Then I pushed it open more_

_Pushing up against the door_

_Then I sat up off the floor_

_And found the breath I was searching for…_

When apologies started to spill, he stopped.

He didn’t have to be fucking sorry for being upset.

Didn’t have to schedule his breakdowns around someone else’s.

It was nice to wake up in the morning without the fear of coming back to a dead voice on a screen.

He still had to worry about his own demons, but now he could worry about them, and not somebody else’s.

Sometimes he felt guilty about this.

He was sorry he felt guilty.

He stopped thinking about this so he could breathe.

_Then there were three men up front_

_All I saw were backs of heads_

_And then I asked them, "Am I alive and well or am I dreaming dead?"_

Sometimes he wasn’t allowed to stay hidden in his room.

Sometimes he forgot who was void, which months floated, got the parts of Josh mixed up.

This was when he would sit with family.

He was real.

Josh used to tell Tyler that Tyler was real.

Once Josh said Josh was real.

Tyler wasn’t sure exactly which was the lie.

_And then one turned around to say,_

_"We're driving toward the morning sun_

_Where all your blood is washed away_

_And all you did will be undone..."_

Nobody asked Tyler how he felt anymore.

Nobody talked about Josh.

Tyler didn’t think about him if he could help it.

Friends telling him they were convinced, too, from what they heard.

Josh hadn’t known what Blurry felt like.

Josh couldn’t know what the scratches on Tyler were caused by.

Tyler questions this.

He still isn’t sure which part of that is void Josh and which isn’t.

He is talking to Josh some. Slightly.

He isn’t supposed to talk to Josh.

He feels like things are okay, most of the time.

Until he thinks.

Tyler wants to erase the floating months.

Considers ignoring Josh. Can’t bring himself to do this, even though his friends say to.

Maybe it will reach the point again where Tyler can feel like he knows Josh.

He’s still questioning everything out of Josh’s mouth, but he won’t accept it as truth _or_ lie for now.

It simply is.

He knows what not to do this time.

**  
** _I said, “Don’t be afraid.”_


	3. What's Best?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blurry knows what's best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry

Tyler hummed lightly as he sat on the floor, counting out his pencils. Trying to sort them by colors into a rainbow that made sense.

Josh used to sit and make pencil rainbows with him, explaining how colors faded into others, talking about light waves and symbolism and all kinds of things about how humans perceive colors.

Tyler hesitated, dropping an orange pencil as he swallowed back cement tears.

He felt orange.

Shaking fingers as he tried to concentrate on the colors and not the void boy suddenly sitting across from him and sucking in all of the colors and love.

Tyler shut his eyes.

**“Hello, Tyler.”**

Flinching heavily at a bad magenta voice.

His eyes snapped open and he looked up, terrified.

A drifting black form in front of him, leaking and dripping in bad bad reds and sticky greens.

Tyler’s chest tightened at the fear of being stained black.

**“Oh, what’s the matter? What are you doing, huh?”**

Fighting to get out words. Tyler could fight him with words.

“O-Organizing my pencils. Nothing extraordinary.”

**“Just pencils, Tyler? I’d check again, if I were you. You never know what can creep in when you aren’t looking.”**

His eyes flickered down to the floor again. Flashing orange, pinks and whites and blues. Pills spilled out in front of him.

Choking on fear.

**“Do you remember how many it takes of the pink ones to overdose, Tyler?”**

Shaking. He did know. He did.

 

Why did he know?

“S-Seven…”

**“Good, exactly! You remembered! I’m so glad you didn’t forget what I taught you. How about those blue ones over there? Oh, start counting the pink ones out.”**

Tyler did as he was told, moving seven of the little pink pills into a pile as he thought.

“Four, isn’t it?”

**“It sure is. Put those next to the pink. Isn’t it pretty? Pills are so pretty, huh? Like candies. Candies for the little boy. Now, the white ones are the ones that make me go away, so be sure you take double of the maximum dose, okay? It takes five to kill, Tyler.”**

Whimpering slightly, the tears dripping down his face as he moved ten white, chalky pills into a third pile.

**“You’re doing so well, I’m so proud - oh don’t cry, Tyler. Josh isn’t here to save you, what’s the point? He never cared anyway. he won’t even know you’re gone. Now, here.”**

A flash of something silver, landing coldly in Tyler’s lap. Razor.

**“Which way do you slit your wrists to be sure you wind up dead? Don’t bullshit me, Tyler, we both know it’s not across. You don’t want to be stuck in a hospital room with me again, do you?”**

“N-No,” Tyler stuttered, feeling cold. He was going to be sick. The window was just eight feet to the left. “It’s d-down.”

**“You’re thinking about the window. Why? That’s not gonna end it, Tyler, you’re only on the second floor. Why are you thinking about the window?”**

Tyler froze up, wanting to curl in on himself. He was so so cold and he wanted to turn on the light. When had the lights gone off?

Something boomed outside as Blurry grabbed Tyler’s leg and Tyler cried out. Black stained him. He didn’t want more black marks, he wanted Josh’s blue hands.

**“Fucking answer me, Tyler.”**

“I want to l-leave,” Tyler  begged, wailing. His nose was running. “I don’t l-like being alone with y-you.”

Blurry’s face twisted into a sickening, too-wide red smile, red eyes hurting him. The same smile as when Josh asked why Tyler called the cops.

**“You don’t _like_ me, Tyler?! I’m not _good enough_ for you?! Why won’t you just _listen_ to me, Tyler? I know what’s _best_ for you. What’s best is that you _end it_.”**

A hand around his throat, closing and pushing, pushing him up against the wall. Tyler struggled, his nails clawing at Blurry’s black hands.

Black marks _everywhere_.

Deadly red dripping from Blurry’s smile as he picked up the cold razor, pressing it into Tyler’s hand and dropping him.

Tyler’s wrists began to drip red as he begged Blurry to leave him alone, screaming against the winds picking up outside.

The winds pressed into the windows, straining, straining.

Pressing into Tyler’s mind.

Wind hits the glass like pills.

**“Just end it, Tyler. I know what’s best.”**

Tyler’s hand shook as he cupped the candy pills, his chest aching.

The windows seemed to burst as Tyler followed Blurry’s instructions.

  
Blurry knew what was best.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [My Chest is Collapsed and My Ribs Scattered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5496158) by [pandemoniumexe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandemoniumexe/pseuds/pandemoniumexe)




End file.
